When a violent sex offender has been tried and convicted of
his crime(s), he may be proffered to a mental health facility of
some variable nature for assessment and treatment. The mission
statements and treatment goals of North American facilities vary
widely. However, due to the fact that bed-space and funds are
finite, all such institutions are compelled to make reviews and
evaluations of patients for release back into society. All
institutions treating violent sex offenders will eventually
release a percentage of their sex offender population. Therefore
all such institutions invariably tender themselves to the
considerations of sex offender dangerousness. Definitions vary
widely. The operant definition of dangerousness in this work will
be: the likelihood that the sex offender will recidivate.

When a deciding body releases a convicted violent sex offender
from a mental health institute back into society, it has
potentially put the wolf back into the sheep pen. The reality is
that the sex offender could do it again, possibly escalating.
That is precisely why good tools for dangerousness assessment are
necessary.

Case Example:

By the time Jerry Brudos was sixteen, in 1955, his fantasies
had already developed into strong and complex motivations for his
behavior. He had an extensive collection of lingerie that he had
stolen from the girls in his neighborhood. He masturbated
frequently, using the stolen garments to fuel and develop his
fantasies.

Eventually Jerry asked one of the neighbor girls whom he had
stolen lingerie from to come over to his home on a night that he
knew the house would be empty. She was eighteen years old. He had
promised to give her private belongings back. She was met in his
house by a masked individual with a knife who forced her into
Jerry's bedroom. He then forced her to remove her clothing and
pose while he took photographs. Later, her statement to the
police was specific in mentioning that she believed the masked
individual was actually Jerry Brudos.

When the masked individual left, she put her clothes back on.
As she was leaving, Jerry appeared and claimed he had been in the
barn and that someone had locked him in. She left quickly, quite
terrified, she later told the police.

Jerry developed the pictures he had taken of her and kept
them.

In 1956, Jerry got a seventeen year-old girl into his car,
offering her a short ride. He drove her to a secluded, abandoned
farmhouse. He dragged her screaming from the car and then beat
her face and breasts. He then ordered her to removed her
clothing. A couple from a nearby farm happened by and interrupted
the incident.

Jerry was turned over to the State Police, who proceeded with
an investigation. A search was made of his room and several years
worth of photographs of frightened young girls and stolen women's
lingerie were discovered. Jerry maintained that none of this
material belonged to him.

In April of 1956, Jerry Brudos was committed to the Oregon
State Hospital in Salem. On April 16th, one Psychiatrist wrote of
Jerry "There is no evidence of suicide, homicide, or
destructive urges,". Jerry Brudos was released before the
end of the year. His official diagnosis had been "Adjustment
Reaction of Adolescence with sexual deviation, fetishism."

Jerry Brudos would later abduct, pose, mutilate, kill, then
rape Linda Slawson, Jan Whitney, Karen Sprinker and Linda Salee
before his second capture and incarceration. All of the deaths
involved extreme acts of sexual sadism. Despite his confessions
and subsequent denials, the events are recorded in detail by
Jerry's own camera, as he photographed his victims moment by
moment. He kept those photos hidden in a secret compartment in
his workbench at home, along with nude photos of his wife. Some
of the photos include Jerry himself, interacting with the
victims(Ressler[14]).

The question begged by the Brudos case is very basic: Could
Jerry Brudos's later crimes have been predicted by any known
factors and then subsequently any recidivism prevented by
continued incarceration?

The Goal

The objective of this work is to present the best tools and
research available for predicting sex offender dangerousness. The
goal behind these tools is to provide for prediction and
prevention of sex offender recidivism; to effectively screen any
offenders who are likely to recidivate from re-entering society.
This would result in a reduction of those sex crimes specifically
targeted by the dangerousness assessment techniques to be
mentioned.

The techniques for predicting future dangerousness to be
suggested in this paper are inappropriate age selection of
victim by the offender, and offender pattern analysis.
Hence, this paper will review the findings of Dr.Vernon Quinsey
of Queens University, and the findings of the National Center for
the Analysis of Violent Crime.

The Victims

Recent statistics generated by the BJS point to an alarming
shift in victim population of choice in reported rapes since
1987. For the years 1973 through 1987, the average number of all
rapes to females reported annually to the police in the U.S. was
154,000, with a 53% estimated reporting rate(Harlow[6]).

This data shows 54,400 rapes to females within the 12-19 year
old range, representing roughly 35% of the total number of
reported rape victims.

During 1992, only 109,000 rapes to females were reported to
law enforcement agencies in the U.S. That's well below the
154,000 average rapes of females per year for the sample in Table
1. However, one half of the females raped in 1992 were juveniles
under the age of eighteen years old(Half of Women...[4]).
Furthermore, 17,000(16%) of the females raped in 1992 were under
the age of twelve[4]. The average age of female victims of rape
continues to fall.

This data represents a fundamental shift in the way law
enforcement and mental health must view the population female
rape victims. Subsequently, it must also represent a fundamental
shift in the way law enforcement and mental health view sex
offenders. The known female rape victim of choice, after a
fashion, is white more than 50% of the time, and she is a
juvenile more than 50% of the time[4].

While overall rape is down over the past ten years, the number
of rapes to girls under the age of eighteen years old has almost
doubled. That increase is significant to the relevance of the
first method proposed for the prediction of dangerousness, as
will be discussed in METHOD #1.

METHOD #1

Inappropriate Age Selection

Dr. Vernon Quinsey has been doing clinical research on sex
offender dangerousness for the past decade and a half. He
currently holds the Psychology Chair at Queen's University in
Kingston, Ontario. He does most of his research sampling out of
the sex offender population from the Penetanguishene Mental
Health Centre, a maximum security psychiatric hospital right
across the street from the University.

One of his findings regarding dangerousness, in 1986,
concerned a group of 360 such offenders. That study showed a lack
of relation between clinical diagnosis of dangerousness and
actual recidivism(Quinsey[13]). One factor he pointed to was the
general disagreement between psychiatrists as to a method for
predicting dangerousness.

Another factor Dr. Quinsey pointed to was objectivity. He
published a quality control study in December of 1986 which data
showed that, "Perceptions of treatability, however, may be
more like moral judgments or judgments of likeability than they
appear to be. If perceptions of treatability are moral judgments,
then the negative correlation of dangerousness and treatability
makes sense,"(Quinsey[10]).

In 1990, Quinsey published another study, providing some basic
points of interest for those interested in assessing
dangerousness. He collected recidivism and readmission data on an
average of 46 month follow-up periods on 54 rapists. Sexual
recidivism and violent recidivism were well predicted by
phallometrically measured sexual interest in nonsexual
violence and degree of psychopathy (Quinsey[11], Hare[5]).

Using the same method to gauge the range of the offenders'
sexual preferences (measurement of penile tumescence before,
during, and after audio descriptions of an array of sexual
encounters, with a baseline tumescence recovered between each
description), Quinsey published an earlier study with associated
results. This time with a sample of child molesters, he
demonstrated that "...sex with children was the most highly
related to victim damage...compared to others, subjects who had
injured their victims engaged in violence or sadism during the
rape, showed little sexual interest in adults and a lot of
interest in coercive sex with children"(Quinsey[9]).

It is possible to list dozens more such published studies
conducted by Dr. Quinsey and his associates, that indicate the
following are excellent phallometric predictors of recidivism:

1) The preference for violence or sadism during rape

2) Degree of Psychopathy of an offender[5]

3) The inappropriate sexual age preferences as measured
phallometrically

In 1991, Dr. Quinsey published a study which data supported,
vehemently, a specific predicting element of a sample of child
molesters (Quinsey[12]). The recidivism of 136 extrafamilial
child molesters was determined on an average of a 6.3 year
follow-up. 43% of those in the study committed a new violent or
sexual offense. 58% were arrested for an offense of some kind or
were returned to the institution. Inappropriate sexual age
preferences as measured phallometrically were related to new
convictions for sexual offenses. Inappropriate age choice is
operationally defined by Quinsey [12] as either a juvenile the
age of 15 or under, or as a juvenile at least 5 years younger
than the offender. Also of note is the result that behavioral
treatment was shown to have no effect on recidivism. Patient self
reports were not related to recidivism at all.

So Vernon Quinsey's contribution to dangerousness in the last
15 or twenty years has been supportive of these results,
consistently:

Pyschopathy is positively correlated to recidivism

Violence/sadism are positively correlated with recidivism

Inappropriate age choice of victim is a consistent predictor
of recidivism

Patient
self reports of sexual preferences have no bearing on
recidivism

Psychiatrists tend not to be very objective about
dangerousness assessment

The tools provided for by Vern Quinsey don't require a lot of
guesswork. They are all excellent predictors with good data to
back them up. They provide a solid foundation for any
multivariate approach to dangerousness assessment.

The most objective assessment tool is of course the offenders
inappropriate age choice of the victim. The juvenile population
of female victims of rape accounts for more than half of all
reported rapes. The relevancy of the victim age indicator of
dangerousness for extrafamilial child molesters, in light of the
growing number of victims in that age range, should not be
ignored. Simply put, Quinsey provides a tool that could have
applications to the offenders who are responsible for 50% or
better of the female victim population. That is seriously
significant.

A problem with this methodology is pointed out by Dr. William
Marshall who shows clearly that sexual arousal, i.e., erectile
responses, is not always a functional part of sexual offenses
committed against women(Marshall[8]). He makes an extremely valid
point. Sexual assaults take many forms. The lack of an erect
penis on the part of a male offender is no true sign of a lack of
male sexual arousal during such an incident. Nor does such an
assault have to be the product of arousal at all. That's why you
could never rely on just one indicator when assessing
dangerousness.

Quinsey has given us three things to look at. Psychopathy, for
which there is a checklist designed very carefully and
thoughtfully by Dr. Robert Hare[5]. A preference of the sex
offender for sadism and violence, which can both be estimated by
victim damage and measured in phallometric studies. Lastly,
inappropriate age choice, which has been measured by phallometric
studies. Each by itself makes a fairly convincing argument for
predicting recidivism. Together they are terribly convincing.

METHOD #2

Offender Type

This model of thinking is not biological. It rates the
offender's behavior from the victim's point of view and from the
offenders point of view. On the subject of recidivism, Robert
Ressler puts it very well indeed when he states, "I prefer
to reason from the facts...in which a man whose violent fantasies
had been developing since early childhood eventually realized
those fantasies..."(Ressler[14]). There is a pattern to the
violent sex offender's crime that makes it likely he will offend
again. The first part is the fantasy, which develops and grows
within the offender over time. The second part is an increase in
violence or sadism, which agrees with Quinsey. The overall
pattern is one of tandem fantasy/behavior escalation.

Groth[3] defines sadism as a single psychological experience
that fuses sexuality and aggression. Violence is damage done to
the victim without sexuality in the mind of the offender. So
sadism is done for the pleasure of the offender; to feel sexual
pleasure from knowing the pain he is giving the victim. Violence
is just meant to hurt the victim, with the offender no feeling
any specific sexual pleasure from it.

Case Example:

Let's think about Jerry Brudos when he was 16: He'd been
collecting women's panties and shoes and underthings from a very
early age. He had an enormous collection; looked through it all
the time, felt the fabric on his arms and face. Smelling those
private things all the time. Putting them on. Touching them to
himself. Masturbating chronically.

Then the rush of going out at night and sneaking into
neighbor's houses. Into rooms of girls he watched during the day.
Older girls with developing bodies. Seeing them around town.
Imagining what they wore underneath their dresses and skirts.
Feeling powerful once he had their panties and their bras and
shoes. Seeing them in the neighborhood later. Knowing he had
their private things, with their private smells still on them. He
had them. He knew the secret of the underthings against their
skin, and against his own.

After a while, Jerry's fantasy gets more involved. He wants a
participant. He wants to know up close the secret that the
panties and the bras hide. He wants to see those private places
that make those private scents that he has held for so long. So
Jerry plans very carefully: invite an older girl over, one whose
items he'd stolen. Promise to give her things back. Make sure
it's an evening when the house will be empty. No interruptions.
Get a mask, a knife, and a camera. The camera is the only way to
preserve what he will see, so that he can see it again and again,
whenever he wants. And she comes over, and he takes out the
knife, and she does whatever he wants in his room. The knife
keeps him in control. And she's afraid and he is very excited.
And he burns a roll of film. When she's gone, he doesn't care.
He's gotten the pictures; a frightened, naked girl. She is crying
and begging to be let go. And only he can do that because he has
the knife. He develops the pictures himself and keeps them with
the lingerie, masturbating often, fantasizing about events over
and over again. And he gets more victims, and takes more photos.
It felt so good to have that control, and to keep reliving it.

But it doesn't last long enough. So his fantasy develops to
make it last longer, with more interaction with the victim. Not
just pictures. Eight months later he gets a girl into the car
with him, but he doesn't have his knife. He drives her someplace
secluded and uses his hands, beating her to make her feel his
control. Later, after his release, his fantasy would escalate
further. His behavior would come to include a pistol, pre-mortem
bondage, and the forced posing of victims in lingerie he had
stolen from other women, often after or during the moment of
death.

Of note is the fact that Jerry Brudos strangled his victims.
He did not kill them with the knife or the gun. Those props were
just to gain and keep control. They would have made his victims
too messy for potential lingerie photographs later, ruining the
fantasy.

Jerry Brudos's clear escalation of fantasy and behavior, which
included sadism, was a prime indicator of dangerousness. His
fantasy was a long time in the brewing. His behavior was
deliberate, fueled by the fantasy. He liked what the fantasy made
him feel, and he wanted to feel more.

As Ressler points out[14], this kind of pattern is indicative
of someone who is going to do it again when they are released.
The sexual sadist is one who has established an enduring pattern
of sexual arousal in response to sadistic imagery (Ressler[15]).
And sadism is an inextricable part of the anger-excitation rapist
classification. Quinsey would agree, saying of an offender with
sadistic fantasies that behavioral treatment does not seem to
affect recidivism[12].

According to the rapists classification scheme, designed by
the National Center for the Analysis of Violent
Crime(Hazelwood[7]), from the work done by Groth[3], and more
thoroughly published in The Crime Classification Manual(Ressler
et al[15]), there is one general type of rapist that will be more
likely to repeat their crimes after release and is generally
resistant to treatment. This is the anger-excitation rapist.

The classification of an anger-excitation rapist in this
scheme involves both offender data and victim data. As a note,
Hazelwood reports a more accurate classification rate from the
victim's report of the rape(mid 90%)[7]. Essentially it involves
extensive interviews with both offender and victim, and a
significant time investment by the attending psychiatrist. Below
are the things that the psychiatrist should be look for to
discern an anger excitation rapist.

The likely profile of the anger-excitation rapist [15].

Uses a con
to gain victim confidence

Sexually
stimulated by victim's responses to the infliction of
physical and emotional pain.

Seeks total
fear and submission from victim

Well
planned, executed methodically

Rehearsed

Offender
brings his own weapons, bindings, props

Offender is
sexually and verbally selfish

Offense
lasts for an extended period of time

Sadism may
be muted with little physical injury to victim, but may
include eroticized aggression, often focused on genital
areas, as:

sexual
bondage biting

likely
record the event

The victim
is susceptible to a con

The victim
is almost always a stranger

These are the sex offenders who are most likely to do it
again. They are offenders who can sustain violence and sexual
arousal in tandem. They have an above average intelligence, they
have a desire to cause the victim pain for their own sexual
pleasure, they have a rich, deeply developed fantasy life[15],
and they are most often resistant to treatment of any kind[12].
When they are released from their perspective institutions, as
was Jerry Brudos at age 17, they are the most likely to do it
again. By applying this classification to such individuals, it is
possible to screen them from re-entry into society. The
subsequent reduction of recidivism would represent a significant
decrease in those kinds of crimes.

SELF REPORTING v. HISTORY

Self reporting tends to be a heavily relied upon staple for
most psychiatrists when assessing offender progress. This method
assumes that the offender wants to get well. That is rarely the
case with a violent sex offender.

As Quinsey has already demonstrated, Dangerousness often
becomes a likeability test for the offender. A moral judgment
rather than an empirical one made by the psychiatrist. This is
not a problem for the violent sex offender. He is a master of
impression management [2], [5]. He knows just what to say to
appear healthy and likable. "Virtuelessness paints a more
convincing picture of virtue than virtue can of itself,"[5].

The most sadistic and prolific violent serial sex offenders
fool their respective psychiatrists quite easily. Many such
offenders have been under the care psychiatrists, who
coincidentally believed them to be making excellent progress, and
all the while they killing and raping human beings[2]. Well-known
examples of this eventuality include Arthur Shawcross, Monte
Rissel, and Edmund Kemper.

An extreme example of this is an instance related by S.A. John
Douglas of the NCAVC[5]. In his most recent work, S.A. Douglas
tells of an inmate named Thomas Vanda in Joliet Penitentiary who
was convicted then incarcerated for the homicide of a young lady.
S.A. Douglas approached the prison psychiatrist about Mr. Vanda,
who stated that Mr.Vanda was responding very nicely to medication
and treatment. Bible study was mentioned as having a positive
effect on Vanda. The prison psychiatrist also stated with
affirmity that Vanda was an excellent candidate for parole if his
progress continued.

As it turned out, the prison psychiatrist made it policy not
to learn the details of offenses committed by particular inmates.
It is his feeling that such details unfairly influence his
judgment against his clients, in this case, Mr.Vanda. But S.A.
Douglas was not dissuaded and proceeded to recount the details of
Mr. Vanda's crime.

Thomas Vanda had joined a church group. After everyone had
gone home, he propositioned the young lady who had hosted the
meeting. The young lady turned him down and Mr. Vanda became
violent. He got a knife from her kitchen, and proceeded to
inflict multiple sharp force injuries to her arms, hands, chest,
and abdomen. Her wounds were fatal. As she was on the floor,
hemorrhaging, Mr. Vanda inserted his penis into an open wound in
her abdomen and masturbated until he ejaculated into that wound.

The psychiatrist became very upset at S.A. Douglas, and asked
him to leave.

The arousal associated directly with the element violent
sadism is key to the pattern of the recidivent violent sex
offender. Mr. Vanda's behavior at that crime scene suggests that
he will re-offend if released. Furthermore, his continued
interest in bible study suggests a refinement of his previous
con.

The violent sex offender is a manipulator. He uses
self-reporting to his advantage. He knows how to get people to
like him. He is a model inmate. He is a model patient. His
specialty is impression management[5]; getting you to buy into
his con. His words, therefore, cannot be believed. Self reporting
is unreliable.

Only offender behavior can be assessed with any near sense of
objectivity. The lesson from the Vanda case, and others much like
it, is clear; without knowing the offender's history, and his
previous patterns of behavior, current behavior can not
accurately be assessed for progress in a treatment program of any
kind.

CONCLUSIONS

The NCAVC and Dr.Vernon Quinsey have each provided the mental
health community with some very timely and useful tools and
guidelines for the prediction of violent sex offender
dangerousness. Their research is sound and ongoing.

Dr. Quinsey's biological method of phallometric measurements
is, as mentioned, not to be used without other criteria, and is
specific only to sex offenders from a maximum security
psychiatric facility. The NCAVC's classification method is more
organic, based on a broader range of reported personality and
behavioral markers. A combination of the two approaches would
likely yield the best results.

Just a side note on the psychopathy checklist. It is an
excellent tool, the only problem being that each individual
psychiatrist has his or her own individual interpretation of it.
That is its greatest weakness. More discussion on psychopathy is
definitely warranted. On the question of recidivism of
psychopaths, the author recalls a course as a Psychology
undergraduate taught by a retired psychotherapist. In a lecture
on the necessity of strong positive regard for the client at all
times, he said, quite sternly, that if you ever come in contact
with a psychopath, don't walk; run. And if they're a sadistic
psychopath, see to it that they get locked up forever.

The ideal assessment regiment for sex offenders who are
candidates for release from a psychiatric facility would include
the following;

Degree of
Psychopathy(Groth[3], Hare[5])

Inappropriate
age choice of victim measurement(Quinsey[12])

Classification
of rapist type(Ressler[14],[15])

With these tools of dangerousness assessment at their
disposal, those who would unlock the doors and set free the likes
of Jerry Brudos and Thomas Vanda may be better dissuaded. If
those individuals who are most likely to recidivate can be more
easily identified and screened by the mental health community,
then there will be a reduction in the most violent and dangerous
types of sex offenses in our society. We will subsequently have
fewer juvenile girls who are dead or in therapy because they
happened to be found by a monster that the mental health
community failed to keep out of society.

8. Marshall, William & Blader, Joseph, "Is Assessment
of Sexual Arousal in Rapists Worthwhile? A Critique of Current
Methods and the Development of a Response Compatibility
Approach," Clinical Psychology Review, 1989, Vol.9 569-587